![]() These reports have become behemoths, averaging 1,600 pages and taking years to complete. Their weapon of choice is often the National Environmental Policy Act and its state equivalents, which require developers to issue environmental-impact statements prior to any large-scale project. ![]() And they’re not just blocking fossil-fuel infrastructure they’re blocking everything. The aforementioned “green groups” empowered at the expense of permitting reform aren’t just national organizations they’re grouchy people with time on their hands in communities large and small. will miss out on more than 80 percent of the recent climate bill’s potential emissions reductions if we can’t build out transmission lines quickly. According to Jesse Jenkins, an engineering professor at Princeton, the U.S. Community-input processes are undemocratic by nature. Of course, Democrats should not trade away anyone’s civil rights in the name of efficiency, but that’s a false dichotomy. If we give people the ability to access the courts, if you give people the ability to stand up and speak their piece, that quite naturally leads to some delay-and I’m not going to compromise that for anything, quite frankly,” Representative Don McEachin, a Democratic opponent of the Manchin proposal and one of the environmental-justice-advocacy network’s top congressional allies, told me. ![]() “Our country has a history of understanding that there’s going to be some sluggishness in a democracy. ![]() The demise of permitting reform reveals that many people within the environmentalist movement are undermining the nation’s emissions goals in the name of localism and community input.Īlec Stapp: What many progressives misunderstand about fighting climate change Manchin’s loss was hardly a win for the climate, however. As my colleague Rob Meyer wrote, these reforms would “likely make it easier, faster, and cheaper to build the kind of major new transmission lines that climate change requires.” But they would also “come at a cost for environmentalists: The bill may authorize some fossil-fuel projects”-in fact, Manchin included a provision requiring approval of a natural-gas pipeline in West Virginia-and “make it harder for green groups to block new infrastructure projects in court.”Įnvironmentalists weren’t willing to stomach that cost: Manchin declared defeat after an uprising from progressive Democrats and reticence from Republican senators. Last month, Senator Joe Manchin proposed speeding up the permitting process for energy infrastructure by limiting the number of legal challenges projects can face and setting time limits on how long a project can languish in limbo, waiting for approval. ![]()
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